Iraq Diary: Fallujah's Biometric Gates (Updated)

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Iraq Diary: Fallujah's Biometric Gates (Updated)

The Marines have walled off Fallujah, and closed the city’s roads to traffic. The only way in is to have a badge. And the only way to get a badge is to have Marines snap your picture, scan your irises, and take all ten of your fingerprints. Only then can you get into the city.

The idea: deny insurgents “freedom of movement,” says Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Smitherman, who heads the biometric badging program for Multi-National Forces-West, here in Al-Anbar province. “Like Mao said, insurgents are like fish swimming in the sea of the people.” These are the high-tech nets, “to keep ‘em from swimming freely.”

There are still plenty of holes in the nets. The biometric systems don’t all talk to one another. Nor do they interface, really, with the other fingerprint- and iris-tracking systems used in other parts of Iraq. Getting the machines to work far, far out in the field can give a Marine migraines. (And, for today, let's not even get into the privacy and human-rights implications.) But, in combination with other measures, the badges do seem to be having an effect. After years of bombs and machine gun fire, the city of Fallujah has suddenly gone quiet.

Putting the system in place can be… well, tedious doesn’t even begin to describe it. One Iraqi after another walks into this converted schoolhouse, ringed with sandbags and razor wire. One Iraqi after another is asked their name, their tribe, and told to put their fingers on the glowing green scanner. A half-dozen Marines from the 2nd Battalion, Regimental Combat Team 6, take the information, and print out the badges. They blast Three-Six Mafia, and watch videos on their laptops, to keep from climbing the walls. One prefers anime, another sci-fi. Corporal Jonathan Rudolph, a twenty-year-old from South Brunswick, New Jersey, catches up on Grey's Anatomy episodes. “So bored,” he mutters occasionally.

But then – every once in a long, long, endlessly long while – there’s action.

A local with a soul patch, a pot belly, and bloodshot eyes wanders into the schoolhouse. Wearing a dirty tan and orange polo shirt, the guy looks like a frat boy who’s just woken up from an extremely rough toga party. He hands his old, pre-biometric, badge to the intel officer, sitting two chairs to Rudolph’s right. A quick search shows that something's wrong. Frat Boy is connected to a bomb-making cell, according to American intelligence. He's told to stand at the back of the room, while the intel officer goes to call for specialist spies.

Meanwhile, another local is lead in. He’s supermodel skinny, with thick eyebrows and a stubbly goatee. His name doesn’t show up on the intel database. But when Rudolph scans his iris, Skinny's name and picture pop up on the computer, overshadowing Grey's Isaiah Washington. “This douchebag here… See his picture?” Rudolph asks me. “He’s wearing an orange jumpsuit. Which means he’s definitely been detained. Look at this: VBIED [vehicle-borne IED] cell, attacks on coalition forces.”

There’s a commotion, and series of questions back and forth.Finally, Iraqi policemen come in. They nudge Skinny and Frat Boy out of the room, through a courtyard, and down an open-air hallway. They open a metal door. The two walk through inside. The policemen slide a deadbolt, and snap a padlock shut.

Now, both Skinny and Frat Boys were locals. So they were already in the irises-and-prints system, called BATS (Biometric Automated Tool Set). Not all insurgent suspects might be. Because there are at least three different biometric systems at work in Iraq. None of those three talk well to one another – if at all. Back in Baghdad, they're running a biometric badge system – based on Saddam’s old fingerprint records – to check on the backgrounds of Iraqi security forces.(Which brings up the question, is a criminal in Saddam’s eyes a bad guy– or a good one?) On the big base outside of town, there’s a third biometric database that monitors the men who work on post.

What's more, because there's no network connectivity at all in places like this precinct house, the entire 100 gigabyte BATS database has to be loaded onto every laptop. Updates to the main server happen, at best, every few days. So someone tagged as an insurgent in one part of town, then let go, might not raise alarms if he’s picked up again in another. Or he might get detained over and over and over, while the database waits to get refreshed.

Things get even more complicated when Marines use handheld versions of the biometric scanners. They only hold 10,000 names at a time. So a Marine has to pick which slice of the database he wants to have in his palm. And all of these systems are subject to danger of bored teenaged grunts, who may get sick of scanning irises, or spell“Muhammed” any one of a hundred ways.

But there are shady characters being caught, despite all that. And there’s a new rule that growing in Anbar, Smitherman says. “For you to come into the community, you gotta tell me who you are.”